Package Managment

Many users decide to use Linux based Operating Systems because of the
freedoms they enjoy, included in the list is the freedom to choose the right
tool for the job. The Slackware package management schema is a model for
displaying the choices that are available to the users. When maintaining a
server or even a personal system a certain amount of control must be given to
the administrator, the control and simplicity of Slackware package management
is what may in fact make you want to try or continue to use Slackware.

Brief Explanation of Slackware Packages

In terms of security and accountability Slackware is excellent because it
brings you software in the condition that the authors intended. What this
means is that the Slackware community does not modify the source or add and
remove functions from software beyond the author's design, unless a small
patch is required to work on Slackware. All packages are built using the
original source code in which only official patches are applied, the only
modifications that are made for the packages are adding .desktop files
(executables for windows managers) and running installed applications/scripts
to update databases, font or icon caches to include the newly installed
files.

Other distributions such as debian and redhat choose to modify the original
source code with their own revisions prior to distribution, this can add
additional functionality but in some cases such as the
debian OpenSSL packages it can
result in exploits that only effect the specific distribution which can
remain unseen
for some time because the original authors (those who know the applications best)
were not responsible for the changes or aware of the changes. This additional
liability is something that an administrator does not want hanging over their
head when running a production system which requires heightened security and
uptime, with Slackware these issues cannot happen as all code that is used
has been developed by those who know the functionality of the applications
best, namely the original authors.

Slackware packages can be found with any of the following extensions:

tbz - Slackware package archive compressed using bzip2

tlz - Slackware package archive compressed using lzma

tgz - Slackware package archive compressed using gzip

txz - Slackware package archive compressed using xz

The reason for the various package formats is the evolution of compression
tools, as better tools have been developed Slackware has adapted their
packages to take advantage of the higher compression tools.

Currently the two most commonly used formats are tgz and txz. txz is the
current standard for official packages because of the increased compression
rate, this change has allowed the development team to reduce the filesize in
installation packages which in turn reduced the space requirements on the
installation DVD, leaving additional space for new applications or documentation to
be added in the same space as before. The tgz format has a less impressive
compression rate but it is sufficient for packages that you build on your
system such as slackbuilds, since on most modern systems disk space is
abundant.

Dependency Tracking

One of the major complaints by new users is the fact that Slackware does not
automatically track dependencies and install dependencies when you install a
file. To many this may seem like a negative mark against Slackware, but many
users prefer to know exactly what is installed on their systems and what it
is for. The lack of dependency tracking allows the system administrators to
install only the dependencies that are required for their necessary
functionality without introducing unneeded components.

Why restrict Automatic Dependency Resolution?

Lack of administrative control

It prompts for installation of packages that may have a bad security history, without manual research you would not be able to verify the security history of an installed package

It may install an application that conflicts with current installed applications, which can break software components in your system.

If you may decide to recompile an application and remove certain functions, the removal of said functions may eliminate the need to have specific dependencies installed but with an auto-resolution system it will force those packages even though they are not needed.

The official and many of the third-party package management tools in
Slackware try to keep away from automatic dependency resolution so the
administrator is in full control of the system.

Installation and Package Management Tools

There are many package management tools for Slackware,both official and from
third-parties, both groups are discussed below.

Official Tools

Included in the base installation of Slackware are two packages pkgtools and
slackpkg.

pkgtools contains a set of applications that are to be used for
basic package management.

slackpkg is a package manager and update tool for
you to use with the official Slackware servers.

pkgtools

pkgtools contains the following executable applications

refer to the man
pages on your system for more detailed information including options and
syntax.

installpkg - This application is used to install a new package.

removepkg -This application is used to remove a package from your system.

upgradepkg - upgradepkg upgrades a Slackware package from an older version to a newer one. It does this by isntalling the new package onto the system, and then removing any files from the old package that aren't in the new package (taken from the man pages).

explodepkg - This tool uncompresses and untars a Slackware package into your current directory so the contents can be reviewed prior to installation.

pkgtool - pkgtool is a menu-driven package maintenance tool provided with the Slackware Linux distribution. It allows the user to install, remove, or view software packages through an interactive system. Pkgtool can also be used to re-run the menu-driven scripts normally executed at the end of a Slackware installation. This is useful for doing basic reconfiguration (like changing the mouse type). (taken from the man pages).

makepkg - This application is used to create a new Slackware package from the contents of your current directory.

slackpkg

slackpkg is to be used to install official slackware packages from the
official Slackware servers and to manage updates and upgrades. This tools is
very useful for keeping a system up-to-date and for doing a distribution
version upgrade without having to do a complete reinstall or having to
download and burn a disk.

When attempting a version upgrade with slackpkg read the file UPGRADE.TXT
from the installation disk to determine instala order and avoid breaking your
system.

Unofficial Tools

The unofficial tools are tools that were made by third parties which are not
officially supported by Slackware. These tools can be broken into two groups
package retrieval and package building.

The package retrieval tools have a functionality which is similar to YAST,
yum, apt-get, urpmi and various tools which are used in other distributions.
These package retrieval tools call to specific online package repositories which
have been set by the user and allow the user to search the repositories to
download and install pre-configured packages.

In contrast the package building tools are somewhat similar to the package
retrieval tools but rather than downloading a pre-build package they retrieve
a build script (which can be customized) and the subsequent source code
allowing the user to custom compile an application for their system and their
needs. Once the application has been compiled, the scripts pass the proper
instructions to utilize the resulting binaries and build a Slackware
formatted package that properly interacts with the Slackware package
management tools. The best comparison for package building tools is to
compare them to the portage system that is used in Gentoo Linux.

Listed below are the Unofficial tools and a brief explanation of their
functionality:

swaret - This tool is designed to replicate the functionality of the Debian apt-get system, you identify the repositories you would like to use and it allows you to download and install packages from the specified location, this tool also attempts dependency resolution.

slapt-get - This tool is designed to replicate the functionality of the Debian apt-get system, you identify the repositories you would like to use and it allows you to download and install packages from the specified location(s).

sbopkg - This tool syncs with the slackbuilds.org build script repository, it is used to pull build scripts, upon choosing the scripts to build it allows you to choose the build order and also customize the scripts. Upon completion of the scripts it will allow you to build a Slackware package or to build and install the package. If you choose to use a third party tool, this is the one I recommend; it has the highest probability or package stability and allows you to customize your packages.

Installation Methods

With of the quality of various tools, you have options for various
functionality when it comes to package management and installations. The main
three methods of installation are listed below:

Install from a pre-built package

Compile the application yourself from the source code, This is ill advised in it's standard meaning, I will discuss this later.

Build a custom package from a build/slackbuild script

Install from a Pre-built Package

To install Slackware from a pre-built package you can use installpkg,
upgradepkg, swaret or slapt-get. This is very simple, in
swaret or slapt-get
you only need to choose the package and select to install it. To install a
package using the official tools you only need to call the program and use
the package name as the argument, the example below is installing the
application wine from the current workin directory.

example:

#installpkg wine-2.5.6-x86.tgz

Compile the Application from the Source Code

Many people have grown accustomed to this method over time, but it is not
preferred in Slackware, instead, to document your actions and avoid
replication of efforts it is advisable to
build a slackbuild script, which
will save you time and effort in the future.

Build a Custom Package from a Build/slackbuild Script

This is the true magic in Slackware, every official package that you receive
has a slackbuild file, in the source directory on the Slackware disk you will
find the slackbuild files and source code for every officially supported
package. This availability in the source directory, allows you to view all
options/modifications that were done to a package and if you need you can
modify the script and arguments to fit your needs. Once the script has been
run and the package has been built you then have a redistributable package
for the specified application that fits your specific needs.

The slackbuild.org script repository houses user submitted scripts for
building stable applications for Slackware that have been tested on various
architectures by knowledgeable members of the Slackware community. Included
in the slackbuild archive are the build script, license information, .desktop
files (if needed), icons, and a .info file that tell you the version, source
download location, md5sum, supported architectures and the author of the
script. There is also a mailing list and an irc channel available if you have
questions or experience problems.

Review slackbuild_scripts for an example of how to build a
package from a slackbuild, and how to build custom scripts.

Package Tracking

When using Slackware, you have the ability to track the installation date,
installed files, and the package description for all packages that are
installed on your system. This tracking is done within the /var/log/packages
directory. This directory contains a single text file for each installed
application, the file contains the package description and list of installed
files/directories from the current package. You can easily view the list of
files within the /var/log/packages directory and sort by name, creation date
or whatever additional criteria you use.

For some examples of the usability of the /var/log/packages directory, you
can review the following:

If you are looking to see what package installed a specific file to your
computer, let say the file is /sbin/iptables, you can run the command

grep /sbin/iptables /var/log/packages/*

This will display all files within the package directory that contain the
exact phrase that was called by grep.

If you want to review the installed files for a package to find all files
that were installed in the /bin directory, let say we are looking at the
pkgtools package, you can run the command

grep /var/log/package/pkgtools-13.0-noarch-3.txt "/bin/"

In a similar fashion Slackware moves the text files from
/var/log/packages to
/var/log/removed-packages when you remove a package from your system, this
makes it easier to have adequate tracking of what you have installed and what
you removed and when each action was taken, this will help you greatly if you
are wanting to replicate the list of installed packages from one system to
another, you can easily write a script to compare the output of the folders
on both systems and output a resulting file of non-matching packages that you
can later use in a script for automatic installation.

More commands and references can be found inthe related articles listed
below.

Related Package Managment Articles

Package Managment
Many users decide to use Linux based Operating Systems because of the
freedoms they enjoy, included in the list is the freedom to choose the right
tool for the job. The Slackware package management schema is a model for
displaying the choices that are available to the users. When maintaining a
server or even a personal system a certain amount of control must be given to
the administrator, the control and simplicity of Slackware package management
is what may in fact make you w…

Unofficial Package Repositories
* slackbuilds.org - This site holds community submitted builds scripts to easily build Slackware packages from the source code of various applications.
* slackware.it - This is a repository of pre-built packages compiled in various languages.

Related Package Managment How-Tos

Building A Package
This is a rough outline for building Slackware packages. Some steps may not be neccessary, some steps might be missing. Use the discussion page for side-notes such as using slacktrack (when DESTDIR fails) and other utilities like checkinstall.

Building and Installing Packages with sbopkg
Sbopkg is a command-line and dialog-based tool to synchronize with the SlackBuilds.org (“SBo”) repository, a collection of third-party SlackBuild scripts to build Slackware packages. The program has a curses based interface which lets you pick and assemble the programs which you want to compile from source into packages. It can also be used non-interactively in case you know beforehand what your goal is - in that case it is

Installing Software
Overview
There are three basic ways to install software in Slackware: install a pre-build binary package, make your own package, or compile the sources and install the resulting binaries manually. If you need to compile a program from source code, making it into your own package is easy and useful. Here's how these methods work.

Querying Installed Packages
Sometimes you might want to check whether a particular package is installed or which version of a package is installed on your system. If the package is part of the Slackware installation you could use the slackpkg tool: